This is the most important invention since the printing press.
It comes in many shapes and sizes and has even more names.
But don't worry about that. According to the sellers of these amazing little gadgets,
they do everything from saving you money, to cleaning your dirty, unstable electricity,
to helping you finally get a good night's sleep.
But you better hurry. We're almost sold out.
There's no time for research when other people are buying them all.
Just look at this graph.
And if you act right now, you'll get 50.
65. No, wait, 70% off.
Look at all these logos of news organizations that you might trust.
Don't they look nice here? Or maybe over here?
Wow, these sites really are a masterclass in scummy marketing.
But the craziest thing about these little miracle gizmos,
they aren't actually a scam.
I mean, they absolutely are a scam.
But at the same time, you know what, this is going to take some explaining up.
Roll the thing for our sponsor. Let's kick off with the beef you're feeling one with the all-metal housing.
If this thing's just a rock and some hot glue, this is going to be a real short video.
Man, this thing is cool. We can see every individual wire in here.
On the next slide, we get a really good look at a couple of resistors.
We've also got what looks like a little LED here.
And this boxy structure, if we alter our view a little bit,
and hence shows us that this is in fact a capacitor.
We can see the two conductive plates inside of it.
Now, if half of the manufacturer claims that these are true,
that right there is the hardest working capacitor on the planet.
Let's change gears and move over to our plastic ones.
Well, it seems like they've got a couple more components on their boards,
including some capacitors on the boards themselves.
But the design is similar overall. So why don't we change gears and talk about what these things are supposed to do.
If you're familiar with electrical circuits, you might already know about inductive, resistive, and capacitive loads.
For everyone else, here's the TLDR.
If something is mostly just making heat, like a hot plate,
or an old-school incandescent light bulb, it's a resistive load, and the voltage and current remain in phase or lined up.
If something is moving, ceiling fans and washing machines are good examples here.
It's probably an inductive load, and the current legs behind the voltage by 90 degrees.
Capacitive loads, meanwhile, tend to be more hidden, especially in the home.
This is where the current leads 90 degrees ahead of voltage.
So these loads are typically used to balance out inductive loads,
and they're mostly found in, well, stuff that has capacitors in it.
Like this PrimePX power supply from our sponsor C-Sonic,
who has more models rated at titanium or above by cybernetics than any other manufacturer.
That means more than 90% efficiency with a power factor of 0.98 or better.
That power factor thing, that's going to mean something to you in a minute.
Coming back to different kinds of loads. If you've got a big industrial building that is stuffed full of AC motors, transformers, and the like,
you can end up with so much inductive load
that it actually starts to impact the efficiency of the power grid itself.
I'm not talking efficiency like some waste heat from your noodle extruding machine.
I'm talking the power company needs to send you more power than you're actually using,
harming their efficiency. That's where something called the power factor comes into play.
It's a measure of how much power is doing work, called active power,
versus how much power it looks like you're using, called apparent power.
And we can find it with this very Pythagoras-y looking formula here.
The ideal power factor is 1, meaning that all the power you're drawing from the grid is doing actual work.
Anything lower and you are impacting the efficiency of the grid,
which your power company is 100% going to charge you for.
So then, how do you reduce the inductive load so your power company doesn't start piling on surcharges?
Capacitors. The power system in any big industrial facility likely has one or more capacitor banks,
which act to smooth out their heavy inductive loads,
hence the capacitors that showed up on our CT scans.
But here's the thing, while the theory is actually sound,
residential customers, you know, the people they're marketing these devices to,
don't get charged based on power factor.
A big part of the reason for that is pretty much all of the heavy power devices in a house
are either a resistive load, or they already have capacitors built into them to compensate for their inductive loads.
We looked from Alberta to Zimbabwe, and across the board,
residential and small business customers are built only for the active power used.
Now, I'm sure there's some outliers that you guys are already furiously typing comments about,
but generally speaking, it's only when you ramp up to large commercial and industrial facilities
that power factor really enters the equation.
And the folks selling these magical gizmos know all of this, they just don't care.
Power factor is that convenient little nugget of truth that they can wrap in the layers and layers of BS marketing
that your conspiracy loving uncle needs to convince them to buy these things for the entire family for Christmas this year.
And some of them take their scam even further.
Let's crack this one open using our handy-dandy precision screwdriver kit from lttstore.com.
Built-in bit storage, fidget spinner worthy end cap, and built-in magnetic parts tray.
With the one screw removed, uh, yes, not a whole lot going on in here.
We've got a basic LED power circuit, that's how you know it's on.
Then we just go ahead and remove the second screw, and this IC right here is a bridge rectifier that converts AC to DC, so far so good.
But this is the part where we get into some funny business.
Do you see our, um, capacitor here?
Well, one of the two leads going to it doesn't seem to actually connect to the rest of the circuit.
You can see it in the x-ray, or actually, just by holding it up to the light.
There's no trace to that pad!
So my question now then is, if this is just here for looks, is this even a real capacitor?
Let's find out. Before I connect this, it's worth noting that this is in nanofarads right now, that's effectively zero.
Moment of truth, is it a real capacitor?
Survey says no. I gotta say, I'm actually kind of surprised that it is more cost-effective to build a fake capacitor than it was to drop the 15 or maybe 30 cents on a real one.
It's got some weight to it, at least.
Oh, did you cut one open? Let's have a look at our fake capacitor.
Oh, is that, like, a little bit of cement that they just smeared on it?
It kind of looks like that. Whatever it is.
The bottom line is if you want to save some money on your power bill,
maybe you should consider upgrading your rig to a new 80-plus platinum-rated PrimePX power supply from our sponsor, C-Sonic.
The PrimePX series is fully modular, and has you covered all the way from 650 watts to 1600 watts,
backed by an industry-leading 12-year warranty.
It uses a 135mm fan to keep things cool and quiet,
and that fan doesn't even spin up until it reaches somewhere in the neighborhood of around 30% load.
With power supplies this efficient, more of your money is going right into those sweet, sweet FPS,
instead of being wasted generating excess heat.
And if you're not sure how much power you need, you can just click on the Calculate button on their website,
and they will help you find the perfect fit. So find your next power supply at the link down below,
and find your next video to watch at this video right here,
where you can watch me get shocked repeatedly as we figure out
if those wireless anti-static wristbands are a scam with the help of our friend ElectroBoom.
Yo, Jordan, how much should we spend on these things? Uh, 20 bucks for four.
Well, I mean, at that price, at least it's a decent value as a nightlight.
$5 nightlight.